reading and writing about why we work

March 2015

03/28/2015

What do I want to be when I grow up? I am striving to be the next senior fashion buyer for Nordstrom. Traveling all around the world with all expenses paid. Attending fashion week in Milan and Paris, as I create a brand and style that will resemble Nordstrom. Buying from the most prestigious designers known to the fashion world would be a dream come true. "People watching" is another big part of the job, people are walking billboards for others to silently judge. Fashion buyers get to "people watch" all around the world to discover what's trending to incorporate those styles to the new trends in advance for the next years seasons to come. The brand Nordstrom allows the buyer to explore more than just one style of fashion. For instance, a brand like Kate spade is directed towards the girly girls of the professional young women and a brand like Michael Kors is aimed towards the simple, classic successful women taking on the world. It is very rewarding seeing people wearing the clothes you bought for the company you work for and seeing what kind of spin they put on the item making it original to their style. If its something that works and I think will do well Ill remember that for the next trend forecast.

Because just living on a small beautiful island would be amazing, getting paid to do this has to be the best job in the world. Being an Island Caretaker on Hamilton Island has many perks: living in a luxurious resort, flexible working hours, and job duties such as exploring the islands of the Great Barrier Reef. In other words, receiving a salary to live in luxury on an island paradise is my dream job. Listed as “Officially the best job in the world” in 2009, the Queensland Tourism Board created the position to help promote the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef to the world.

The role of Island Caretaker is a six-month contract, and is based on luxurious Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef. The job has some tough requirements: reporting your adventures to Tourism Queensland headquarters in Brisbane (and the rest of the world) via weekly blogs, photo diary, video updates and media interviews, and feeding fish.

Although these duties sound difficult, the position has some good benefits; for example, a salary package of $150,000 for the six-month contract. The island caretaker receives a substantial salary, lives in a luxurious resort, and has to take care of an island paradise. This is the perfect job for me; getting well-paid to live in luxury on a beautiful island in the Great Barrier Reef.

03/27/2015

Fascinated by the incredible LEGO sculptures I saw at LEGOLAND, I wondered how fun and different a career as a Lego Master Builder would be. Many of us have sat down in front of a box of LEGOs and set about building or helping to build a fantastic creation in multi-colored blocks, but most of us have never thought it could be a career.

LEGO has a number of very talented Lego builders who are certified professionals . These Master Builders create and construct incredible LEGO sets and sculptures for LEGO parks. Because you can be creative, artistic and have fun, a career as a Lego sculptor seems very exciting and fulfilling.

LEGO Master Builders work against fairly tight budgets and thematic constraints. They are based in LEGOLAND Discovery Centers around the world, and are also employed at the company’s six LEGOLAND theme park locations: Billund, Denmark; Windsor, England; Günzburg, Germany; Nusajaya, Malaysia; Winter Haven, Florida; and Carlsbad, California.

As a customer, if you want a human-sized sculpture, then your cost is already in the range of a few thousand dollars. All projects are negotiated on a case by case basis. Frequently, a human-sized statue will usually take at least a month to design and build. Also, if the models have to be glued, that adds significant time. Mosaics are usually built much more quickly, but a mosaic of any significant size will often require at least a week.

Because competition to be a Master Builder is so fierce, in most cases builders have to start from the bottom and work their way up; only the most skilled Lego artisans ever achieve the honor of Master Builder. These Master Builders are hand-picked by LEGO. Currently there are only around forty LEGO Master Builders in the world, seven of whom are Americans. Because of the creativity, imagination, artistic expression and sheer fun involved, a career as a Lego Master Builder seems very rewarding, fulfilling and exciting to me.

My dream career would be to plan weddings or special events for famous people. It does not necessarily involve saving lives or changing the world, but for me this type of work is exciting and fulfilling. You know the excitement I am talking about if you have ever attended a big event or a family/friend's wedding and the feeling of "wow that was such a great time." That is what I would get to do for a living everyday. The whole planning process is such a joy and everyday is a new adventure to deal with. The places you go and the people you meet, each unique in their own way. I currently work in a special events venue and here we meet some pretty amazing people. I get to be a part of peoples most important day in their lives. This job was originally something I fell into, but I absolutely love it. I will even say I like the stress and drama that goes with planning an event, it is just part of the job. Looking back, I have always liked working behind the scenes, spending days or months putting on school dances or setting up sporting events with my school's associated student body. Even if I do not get to be as famous or successful as David Tutera, as seen in my video, I will always be in the wedding industry because it makes me happy. Ultimately that is all any of us really want in life!

My dream career is to work as a preschool teacher. I have been pursuing this job for years now and feel amazing when I work with children. Having two kids of my own people don't understand how I want to work with kids but I love putting a smile on their face.What is exiting is that I will get to teach our future those children are what we are leaving in this world to keep living. I would want to do it because I want to make a difference and feel that we can stroll teach our children to change our society. I feel we live in a society in which we believe in failure and that violence is taught since we are small when teachers don't care to make children understand how bad it is. This is a dream job because you can teach you can help kids believe in dreams but most important you can make these children smile.

What do you want to be when you grow up? The famous question that haunts many people in their youth. Many children answer the questions with creative career choices: cowgirl/cowboy, police, dragon slayer, ballet dancer, and ninja. When I was a kid, my answer was always fashion designer/stylists. As of now, becoming a fashion designer is still my dream job. Fashion is something I have always loved, always been good at, and have always shown interest in. I love putting different outfits together! I appreciate the materials used in good clothing, and I appreciate bargain deals. My dream of being a fashion designer would include me creating a clothing line that is effortlessly comfortable and trendy; I would style models for photo shoots in my clothes. While styling models, I would choose different garments to show off to create beautiful fashion photos. Because I love looking at photos in magazines, I would strive to take photos just as luxurious. While I am on Instagram, I find that my favorite fashion photos are easily accessible. Fashion is art in my eyes. If a garment is made with quality materials and expertise, then the garment expresses an artist quality. When I notice that clothing is well made, I must add it to my collection in my wardrobe. Even if I don't become a fashion designer, at least I know I can dress well. The haunting question of what I want to be when I grow up still haunts me today. Who knows if I'll be a fashion designer or not, but it is a dream that I have always had.

Givenchy is one of my favorite high fashion designers. The video will show how creative and artistic fashion can be.

The brain is the most fascinating organ in our body, I compared it to a Pandora box; every day there is a new discover about the brain; there for,it is full of surprises. The brain controls most of the systems in our bodies, but what happens when the brain does not function properly? It can affect our nervous system or worst; it can put us face to face with death. What if I told you that by learning a certain subject and devoting yourself to it, you can have the chance to help contribute to improve a person’s health, or better; save his life, would you devote yourself to it? A very exiting career that allows you to study and fix problems with the brain is called neurosurgeon. If my circumstances where different I would’ve pursuit this dream career because I love to learn, I have a hunger for knowledge and I like to dive deep to discover new things, and becoming a neurosurgeon offers me these three things I love to do. I was inspired by Dr. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon who performed different type of brain surgeries, but he is well known for his surgeries in conjoint twins. He was raised by his single mother, along with his brother in a poor class society. He’s mother pushed him to read two books per week, which eventually helped him develop his imagination and passion for learning.

Dr. Carson became a great neurosurgeon performing about three hundred surgeries per year. He and his team of more than seventy people composed of nurses and other specialized doctors were able to separate conjoint twins around the world, but just as he was successful in those surgeries he also faced tragedies when he faced complications during multiple surgeries involving conjoint twins in which they end up losing their life. What is most important is that these unsuccessful surgeries helped him understand more about the brain and find solutions to prevent possible tragedies in the future. Despite these tragedies, Dr. Carson contributed so much to the medicine world that he became “one of the nation’s 20 foremost physician and scientist” by CNN and Time magazine, he was also awarded “the Ford’s Lincoln Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom”, which is the highest civilian honors in the USA. Dr. Carson’s inspiring career helped me understand that you do not need to be the smartest kid in your classroom, or have all the money in the world to pay for school in order for you to accomplish a dream career. All you need is to be devoted to who you want to be, or want to become and pursuit it.

What is really exciting about this career is being able to learn how this three pound mass called brain controls everything in our body, like, your emotions, your vision, your breathing, you’re learning capability, how you think, how you process information and how it creates new ways to retain more information. It is simply amazing all the things the brain can do. As a neurosurgeon you will diagnose and surgically treat disorders that involve the nervous system, like congenital anomalies, trauma and tumors, infections in the spine and brain, and stroke. Being a neurosurgeon doesn’t necessary mean you will be able to surgical treat all patients but it does allows you to perform deep studies to come up with possible solutions and preventions to the problems involving the brain and the nervous system. What is most rewarding about this career is the amount of things you will discover and how you can contribute to help patients live a longer normal life by correcting their brain disorders with brain surgeries.

I can assure you that the satisfaction of helping others through this career will last you a lifetime.

A video of a Neurosurgeon talking about his "job".

Here is a link to the beautiful movie "Gifted hands" the Ben Carson's story. If you would like to watch it.

How does 200 miles per hour sound to you? That is probably faster than anyone reading this will ever drive in their entire lifetime. Yet this velocity is approached every weekend by different race car drivers as they wrestle their vehicles through courses on the edge of control sometimes inches from other drivers doing the same. Drivers push the vehicle and themselves to the limit with unbelievable consistency lap after lap in order to prove that they are the fastest. For me, driving a race car is the ultimate thrill. When I compare racing to something like skydiving, I believe skydiving is boring and takes forever. Racing a car is so rewarding and fun because it requires physical endurance, intelligence, patience, courage and concentration. Racing a car is my dream job. The competition of racing a car against other drivers is exhilarating and especially rewarding when you win. Being a racing driver also gives you the opportunity to race vehicles that are way out of a normal persons fiscal grasp.

Race cars can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and usually require an entire team of support personnel. For example, NASCAR vehicles cost on the order of $150,000 whereas Formula 1 cars can cost around $15 Million Dollars; plus hundreds of millions more in research and development.

A race car driver gets to drive the most high tech vehicles on the planet; he actually gets paid to drive these insane race cars. A race car driver (before he has to deal with the politics of being a racing driver) has the most rewarding job on the team, they are responsible for driving the pride and joy of many people involved in the vehicles creation and upkeep.Out of all types I found that rally racing seemed to capture what I love best about driving race cars. Rally drivers race down public city and rural streets around the world as fast as possible where no corner is seen twice. Drivers compete to be the fastest over a section of road with surfaces varying from dirt to asphalt. Rally driving offers the best aspects of race car driving. Rally racing especially allows you to intensely focus on simply surpassing the speeds that our bodies allow is to travel. Racing creates an almost zen like state where whatever is going on in the world doesn't matter. Its just you and the car. While racing a car the outside world no longer matters. The only thing on your mind is being in tune with the animal your controlling with a wheel and pedals.I believe the award winning short video below called, Climb Dance best illustrates the feelings of actually racing a car: the pressure, the calm, the fight, the joy. Race car drivers have a job that really doesn't seem like work to me. Racing is my hobby, so for me it looks like a good weekend.

As you walk on to a dark stage where there is hundreds of people just waiting for you to be seen! Boom! The lights turn on and it you! Only you! You show them what you got. That's the best feeling for me. All the attentions on me and I get to show what I have to show to the world.There is no other way to go but dance! Lets talk about the psychological effects. Dance can be an easy and great fun way to release your stress and emotions. Dance can be where you can express your feeling not just one way you have to but in all ways. That's what makes your dance unique. No one can feel the same way you do. I choose this as my dream career because I would love to be able to not only dance and show the world but to be able to mold my own dancers. To be able to look out on stage and see that those dancers are dancing the techniques you taught them. I want to do this because how many of us can say our job is exciting or fun? My career will never get boring always new music to dance to. Dance is always evolving. Here is a little video to show how interesting Dance can be. Some may find it weird awkward and some may find it exciting. This is a type of dance and I am so happy an artist brought light to this type of dance! Enjoy!

03/26/2015

What do you want to be when you grow up? This question has remained in the back of my mind since my early childhood years, challenging me to project myself into a future that seemed so distant from those carefree, happy years. Around the age of 12, I can remember responding to this question by asking a question in return: “Who heals people?” The response I received then was that “doctors heal people.” Inspired by the answer, I chose to focus on pre-medicine as my field of study. After some consideration, however, I came to the conclusion that doctors do not actually heal people; they simply facilitate the healing process by trying to solve the manifestations of disease rather than through preventing the diseases from occurring in the first place. In contrast to a disease-oriented approach, preventative medicine recognizes that healing occurs from within and that a significant number of diseases that people face today- such as heart disease, depression, and cancer- can be linked to stress and poor lifestyle choices.

At this point in my life, I feel guided to choose a career that aligns with what I value most; which is taking care of my family. However, if for a brief moment, I imagine that time, money, or responsibility were not a factor in my decision, I would wholeheartedly choose a career path of teaching meditation to others. For me, teaching meditation combines my enjoyment of sharing my knowledge with others and the opportunity to teach others how to access their own inner source of peace and healing.

As a form of preventative medicine, meditation benefits people on many levels pertaining to health and well-being. According to the article, Meditation Health Benefits: What The Practice Does To Your Body, posted on Huffington Post, meditation: 1) strengthens the immune system; 2) decreases blood pressure; 3) reduces the stress hormone (cortisol) in the body; 4) improves memory and critical thinking; 5) increases empathy for others; 6) improves our ability to focus; 7) positively changes the physical structure of the brain; 8) decreases cravings and addictions and; 9) increases a person’s ability to handle stressful circumstances in a healthy way.

Meditation combined with exercise and a healthy diet can be powerful tools to increase both the quality and the quantity of a person’s life. Additionally, meditation can decrease your chances of acquiring a stress-related disease, but it does not entirely prevent them from happening. Thus, healing does not always include the option to take action; sometimes the only way a person can heal is through acceptance. Helping people become centered while experiencing the varying troubles of life is where the practice of meditation excels.

More importantly, regardless of the condition of the body, meditation helps people connect with the source of their inspiration, creativity, and bliss. Through this process, meditation helps people enjoy life to the fullest by allowing them to become more present with the people in their lives and their natural surroundings, thus more easily connecting them to something greater than themselves.

I encourage any person who is interested in exploring the art of meditation to find a meditation practice or group that aligns with their values so that they can experience the many benefits that meditation has to offer.